Undecaf

Or could it be that GI are so bad at playing that they can't handle a rudimentary button mashing (that PC World reviewer can) and think the combat is actually more that it really is?

I think it would be a neat little quirk if the game allowed me to - if I felt like it - roll the attributes. Manual selection is all well and good and I use that, but sometimes it just feels good to roll a random character and see what comes of him/her (and the current "one for all and all for one" attribute system would appear to support such in that you can't well screw up with rolling). I don't suppose it's particularly hard to implement either - a little complementary feature for number assigning like that.

You should give it a try. Once you get the hang if how the interfaces work, it's actually quite fun (for a game if its age).

Yes, I think it would work better turnbased team-by-team or character-by-character. If that was ever to happen... but it isn't.

Getting used to the PC controls of Hogs of War which GOG was kind enough to add in their catalogue. Just as fun a game so far as it was 14 years ago.

Witcher for me. Even if I'm wary of how W3 will end up, Bioware hasn't been making anything of interest to me in years and it doesn't seem like they're going to either.

I think he might mean how much the music pushes the player to pay attention to it as a mood creator for the specific scene since he's not busy with concentrating on the minutiae of the closeup gameplay where the soundrack is more in the role of background noise. Of course I could be wrong, but that's how I'd think about it.

I haven't read all the discussions about this subject, but what I think it comes down to is the amount of encounters that aren't related to a goal that has the XP bound to its solving versus the amount of questrelated encounters that do provide it. I don't mind if there are some encounters here and there that simply work as a combat centric set piece to liven up the world space, that shouldn't distrub anyone, but if the bulk of the combat content is about that sort of trashmobbing and then colleting the beetle innards, rusty daggers or 20 "Dyr-Rubles" for reward, or if the amount of needed fighting is clearly not on par with the achieved reward, then I think there might be a problem about it. But I wouldn't know yet which way it'll lean in the end (can't remember any specific mention about this particularly). And I didn't vote, because my preferences will be based on the context rather than principle.

I back this up. I've only tried a few rounds of combat, but the characters (and their interface related accessories) seem to mesh in the background a bit too much, which often makes keeping track of the happenings something of a chore. Especially during night time outdoors - the beetles weren't hard because of difficulty or the rules, but because the whole scene was visually so obscured it was hard to keep track on who was doing what and to whom (and of course the bugs about unresponsiviness and such, that gets mentioned a lot). Also in the zoom function bugs out all the time outside the town, instead of zooming in or out, it begins to only adjust the visibility range moving the edges of fog of war.

Read 2D Deus Ex and hoped for a "2D first person point'n click adventure RPG", not so much a "2D sidescrolling platformer action RPG". Things just don't tend to work my way.

The combat still looks scetchy to me. Sort of messy and almost directionless. Rolling is replaced normal movement, so I guess that's something, but the functionality still seems almost identical to Witcher 2. I dunno... I guess I was hoping something a bit more slowpaced and weighty than that.

Hah, not at all. It appeared like typical Hollywood style chestbumping of an overproduced wannabe hero spectacle. I'm sure its in line with the expectations of it's intended audience and there will be much rejoicing among them, but it certainly didn't change my mind about the game.

Heh. Card games for tablets... Not funny but I'm laughing anyway. On the other hand; if they make a board game emulation that ends up on PC DRM free and dirt cheap, I might take a look.

Spotted at Codex: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/16/obsidian-on-project-eternity-kickstarters-future/ It's a year and a half old, but...

My stance too. With the exception that I won't be getting DAI no matter how it stands.

That's about the only way I might get more interested in this than "Oh well, we'll see what comes out of it".

Gah..... Not in my area of interest. Not at the moment. If it's not fake, I hope it'll end up good, but I'm won't be jumping up and down for this.

http://youtu.be/5wBTdfAkqGU Mother of god....

Looks like a 70% CGI music video. But since it's George Miller and Mad Max, I think I'll let it fly.

No bowlin' with Niko anymore for me.... Doesn't look that enchanced.

Still secretly hoping for either Bloodlines spiritual sequel or B.A.T. spiritual successor (two birds with one stone, spy and scifi) with properly beefed RPG mechanics, reactivity and narratives. Something original'll do just fine though; as long as it is not magics, elves and platemail kind of fantasy.

Somewhere there was the context...... Anyway, people have different tolerances for dark humor and that sort of symbolism, and that's ok, but the picture isn't laughing at child abuse.

Or detracts from it horribly through an awkward, contrived and glued on accesssory feature that can never really grow to its full potential and casts a toxic shadow over everything else. Like it usually does.

There does not need to be an inherent drawback. If [a] game has its experience intended to be evenly thick and servile regarding this matter (like NV, where the practical difference between choosing guns or EW is cosmetic for the most part - in my experience), then so be it. But the opposite, relative inequality of the skills (still provided that they earn their existence by having enough use throughout their respective ranges) is not such a boogeyman, regardless of whether Fallout had it right or wrong. It simply delinearizes the experience and requires a different approach in comparison to the balanced to serve [equally in all respects] way of doing things.

I meant in the context of everything being balanced so evenly thick that there is no contrast between the choices you make, that which ever way you go, you get the same lukewarm and servile experience that does not dare to require anything short of thinking related from the player, and due to everything being equal in impact and usage you might as well have nothing to choose from. That's the hyperbole included. I don't ever knowingly create gimp builds. They all (need to) serve a purpose in the game other than being inept at things; systems allowing of course. So obviously I am not proponent of dead end skills, but there is the balancing act of how much does the investment serve, where and when - if it is sparse, the impact is optimally large when it happens, if it is plentiful, the impact need not be as large as you get to use it all the time. It certainly does not need to be so that everything is useful from the beginning to the end in equal measure (that feels artificial to me already thinking about it). Of course the player needs some information on how to play, but a healthy dose of common sense should also be a serving agent in how the game flows. If after a couple of levels, there's still no energy weapons in sight (being able to trust that the skill is not there just for the show, that it will have it's use eventually) and combat is lagging due to that, that could just be a sign that perhaps another combat skill is hungry for a few points to compensate, or that combat should probably be avoided until the proper tools for the chosen trade are found (provided the game has plenty of other gameplay opportunities outside of combat - if not, then it is bad design). You build the character you wish, and you play according to it - some builds pose more challenge than others, some are less even than others, some are less fun than others (subjective). It shouldn't matter as long as the builds serve their purpose in the game. The systems needn't strive for equality between the top and the bottom, but just serving the gameplay in a way that makes a difference which ever way that is done. But yeah, it's 3.30am and I might've started rambling. Take it as you will, I wasn't attempting to start an argument to begin with.